Phillies family remembers '93 skipper Jim Fregosi

Former Phillies manager Jim Fregosi, an All-Star who won more than 1,000 games as a manager for four teams, died Friday after an apparent stroke. He was 71. (Photo/George Widman, File) (AP Photo/Ed Reinke)

“Jim Fregosi will be deeply missed in the baseball world. Joni and the rest of the family are in our prayers. Fregos, was the best manager I’ve ever played for. Our relationship was so special….and he was the one that taught me how to be a leader. Fregos and I could relate to each other whether we were in the clubhouse or on the field. In 1993 The City of Brotherly Love changed the world…..Fregos was the driving force!!!”

— Darren Daulton

“Jim Fregosi was not only one of the most respected men in baseball, he was a great man. He was a player’s manager. He had that special gift as a manager that made you want to get to the field and play your ass off for him. Jim Fregosi was the reason that 1993 was one of the most exciting years in Philadelphia sports history.”

— Lenny Dykstra

“Jimmy was the perfect manager for our team. He knew exactly when to leave us alone and exactly when to jump our asses when it was needed…and along the way he became our friend.”

— John Kruk

“Jimmy was the best manger I ever had the honor of playing for. He was a man who was happy every time I ever saw him. My career was less than spectacular, but would have even been more mediocre if not for Jim. The word that defines him best is trust! He trusted everyone to do their jobs. I was a manager’s nightmare, but Jim trusted that I would get the job done. He made all his players better because his trust gave us confidence. He would hand me the ball in the 9th and go up the tunnel and smoke and say let me know when it’s over. He trusted me. He once said that ‘Mitch doesn’t have an ulcer, but he is definitely a carrier.’ I loved Jimmy and his wife Joni. They both lived to be happy. I can’t express the sorrow I feel for Joni, and Jimmy’s 5 kids. He was like a father to me, and I was just a player. I can only imagine the kind of father he was to his own kids.”

— Mitch Williams

“I am deeply saddened today about the news of Jim Fregosi. He was a dear friend, and father figure to me throughout my baseball career. He gave me my first opportunity to play in the Major Leagues and taught me how to be a professional baseball player on and off the field. My prayers go out to Joni, Jim, Jr. and the rest of the Fregosi family. He was a great baseball man and he will be missed severely.”

— Mickey Morandini

“Playing for Jim Fregosi was like playing for your Dad, except he always claimed I was older than him. He was a tremendous manager and a huge reason the 93 team was as good as it was. He will be sorely missed and our thoughts and prayers go out to Joni and the kids.”

— Larry Andersen

“The thing about Jim is he was your friend but there is a line that you don’t cross when he is the manager and everyone knew the line. He was the best manager I had played for! I will never forget him and what he gave me in the short period of time we were together.”

— Danny Jackson

“I don’t know what I can say about Jim Fregosi that anybody in baseball doesn’t already know. WHAT A GREAT AND KIND MAN! I can tell you what he meant to me: He was always honest with me and spoke in a way that made me feel so confident in what I was doing. He always believed in the ability that I had. He made baseball FUN!!!!”

— Tommy Greene

“What a great leader. Jim led a group of guys who weren’t supposed to do anything to a National League Championship. He wasn’t afraid to tell a player the truth and I respected him for that. He will be missed.”

— Milt Thompson

“Jim was a man’s man and a player’s manager, but most importantly he was a great friend.”

— Dave Hollins

“Not only was Jim a great players’ manager to play for, but he was also a father figure to all of his players. He not only cared about you on the field, but he cared more about how you and your family were doing off the field. He was a special man. He will be deeply missed. God Bless his soul and my condolences to his family.”

— Ricky Jordan

“I couldn’t have asked for a better first manager in the big leagues. Jim was the master at dealing with different clubhouse personalities. From the biggest to the smallest. Even though I was a rookie in 1993, Jim made me feel like a veteran from the first day I was called up. Jim wanted his players to succeed, not only to help the team but he understood that baseball was a career choice and he would have done anything to help you on that path. He will be missed.”

— Kevin Stocker

“Jim was a great baseball man and a special friend. He will always be fondly remembered for his handling of the Phillies 1993 team that made it to the World Series.”

— Dallas Green

“Jim was someone everyone enjoyed being around. He was a very smart man with a good sense of humor and a tremendous love for his family. He will be thought of and missed by his many friends, both in and out of Major League Baseball. My wife, Doris, and I pass along our condolences to his family.”

— Pat Gillick

“Jimmy was a very good friend of mine. I loved talking baseball with him because we shared a lot of the same philosophies about the game, especially when it came to managing, and we both care deeply about the Phillies. I’m going to miss him and our fishing trips together. Missy and I send our thoughts and prayers to his family.”

— Charlie Manuel

“Jimmy was a man who loved life, his family and the game of baseball. He had many opinions and loved a good argument. In many ways, he was a larger than life character with a tremendous, self-deprecating sense of humor. When asked how the Mets could have traded a young Nolan Ryan for him, he would bellow, ‘What were they thinking. Didn’t they know I was done’! We’ve lost a good friend. Our game has lost a great ambassador.”

— Chris Wheeler

“Lee Thomas brought Jim and I on board in 1989 and it is a friendship that I’ve valued for the past twenty-plus years. Jim’s magnetism and larger that life personality drew people to him. And, along with that outgoing spirit, Jim possessed a genuine sense of kindness and generosity. Today, we remember not only a good baseball man, but also a great human being.”

— Ed Wade

“There are so many memories of Jim. Probably the one that stands out happened in the Executive Dining Room at the Vet years ago. We were having lunch before a trade announcement. I brought up some questions he may get asked. He slid his reading glasses to the end of his nose, looked me in the eye and said, ‘Baron, I don’t need your coaching.’ My response was simple, you’re right.”

— Larry Shenk

CLEARWATER, Fla. — Twenty-one years ago, on these same fields where the Phillies are getting their bodies ready for the long journey that is a major-league baseball season, Jim Fregosi took his team on one of the most extraordinary journeys in franchise history.

They were miserable in 1992, going 70-92 and finishing dead-last in the six-team National League East. But from the moment the 1993 team arrived in Clearwater, there was something different.

“I know that the key guys, the core guys on that team, started out the first or second day of spring training by going out after practice and kind of making a pact that they were going to do everything possible to win,” Phillies chairman Bill Giles said Friday morning. “We played harder in the spring games of ’93 than any spring training I’ve ever seen. I remember (Darren) Daulton and (John) Kruk and these guys, particularly when we played the Yankees, played like it was the seventh game of the World Series.

“I’ve never seen a team play as hard as they did in ’93 and it set the tone for the season.”

Advertisement

The Phillies did get to that World Series, ultimately losing in dramatic fashion to the Blue Jays. Yet that Fregosi-managed team remains the favorite of Giles and countless others in Philadelphia who came to appreciate the fact that never had a team gone so far with so little expected of it.

Jim Fregosi died early Friday in Miami, four days after suffering the first of a series of strokes. The loss stunned those who knew Fregosi as a big man with an aura of indestructibility, one with a barrel chest and a quick-trigger sense of humor.

Ruben Amaro Jr., who went from a utility player often ribbed by Fregosi in 1993 to the team’s general manager, wept openly as he tried to describe what the man who won 1,028 games as a manager and made six All-Star appearances as a shortstop before he turned 29 meant to him.

“These last couple days have been very difficult for the Phillies organization, the Phillies family and me on a personal basis,” Amaro said. “Baseball lost a great person and a great baseball man today.

“I’m indebted to him for a number of reasons, personally. … Jimmy gave me an opportunity to come back and play here in Philly.”

It is the latest tragedy to befall a member of that team. Fregosi’s right-hand man, bench coach John Vukovich, died seven years ago after a long battle with brain cancer. Catcher Darren Daulton and pitcher Curt Schilling are battling cancer; first baseman John Kruk, pitcher Danny Jackson and backup catcher Todd Pratt had bouts with cancer, as well.

“It’s tough,” said Larry Bowa, Fregosi’s third base coach in 1993. “You start thinking about playing at the Vet and this stuff happening. Yeah, it’s tough. This one caught a lot of people off guard.”

“It’s awful,” Amaro said. “I have a lot of close friends — obviously Darren with his health issues, losing Vuk several years ago — and those are all things that bring back really rough memories. All we can do is hope and pray Dutch works through it.

“I told my mom this morning that maybe it’s good that Jimmy and Vuk are together.”

Bowa, who has returned to the organization this season as Ryne Sandberg’s bench coach, recalled how Vukovich ribbed Fregosi for the fact that he superstitiously wore the same heavy coat in the dugout all season.

“Vuk used to call him Jimmy Jackets,” Bowa said. “In ’93, it was a hot summer, it would be like 100 degrees out there and he would have that big jacket on. We’d say, ‘Are you crazy, managing with that jacket on?’ He said, ‘Hey, as long as we keep winning I’m wearing this jacket all year.’

“He was old school. … He’d play cards with the players. He and I were partners. We’d always get two players and normally when you play cards with a manager or coach, you’re in trouble. We used to take some advantage of that and make some money in the summertime. … We’d win about 10 in a row and then we’d lose, and he’d say, ‘Bow, you’re the dumbest card player I’ve ever seen.’”

The 1993 Phillies were loaded with card players, cigarette smokers, tobacco chewers, oddballs and outcasts. Long before the Red Sox ever broke Babe Ruth’s curse or grew out their facial hair, the 1993 Phillies had set the bar for baseball players who had just rolled out of a moving boxcar. And yet Fregosi had complete authority over the clubhouse, with Daulton serving as his conduit.

“He was very straightforward and honest with the guys,” Amaro said. “He would jump Pete Incaviglia as fast as he would jump Ruben Amaro. It was very, very easy for him to do that, yet at the same time he also tried to pump you up. He was always available. I think he had a really good feel from being on the field as long as he was. He had a really good feel for people, just a big personality, big ego, great to be around. He knew a lot about the game, and would tell you he knew a lot about the game. But you loved that about him.”

There was an unsightly ending to Fregosi’s career, as the veteran players who had their career seasons in 1993 started to break down and decline swiftly. In 1994 he had unflattering off-the-record comments about those who listen to and host shows on WIP leaked to the station, putting a strain on his relationship with the city. He was fired after the Phils collapsed to a 95-loss season in 1996. Fregosi would manage the Blue Jays in 1999-2000, then spent the remainder of his career as a special assistant to the general manager with the Atlanta Braves. That hardly meant he spent his time sitting in an executive box. Fregosi was a regular behind the backstop at Bright House Field, scouting the Phillies.

“I had a phone conversation with (Braves president) John Schuerholz,” Phillies president David Montgomery said, “and he said that was Jimmy Fregosi — everywhere he worked he kept in touch and was such a friend of so many people. Spring training is obviously a place to remember him because in that scout section or press room, there was always a corner and there was some homage paid to Jimmy.”

“He had that great knack of projecting what a guy might be able to be,” Bowa said. “He could see a player in the minor leagues and tell you if he would be in the big leagues and most of the time he was right. I heard him say a lot of times, ‘This guy won’t play in the big leagues.’ You looked at him and said, ‘Are you crazy?’ And the guy never got to the big leagues.”

Fregosi had gone directly from the playing field to a manager’s job in 1978, retiring from the Pirates and taking over the Angels, the franchise where his best playing days took place. The next season, the Angels won the AL West.

Yet the 1993 Phillies brought him the most notoriety.

“We had guys that bought into what Jimmy was trying to do,” Bowa said. “He always told those guys, ‘I don’t care how old you guys are, or what you did last year, I believe that you guys can win.’

“Let’s face it, we caught lightning in a bottle. But he had those guys believing they could win. That’s hard to do sometimes. Players know when you’re pulling the wool over their eyes. They started believing.”

Get all the latest news on the Phillies in Clearwater on beat writer Dennis Deitch’s blog, Phollowing the Phillies.